We're going to split out main server up into 3, possibly more with backup redundancy. The basic setup will be 1 server (USER) holding everyone's physical account, 1 server (MAIL) which holds everyone's mail spool (INBOXES only), and 1 server (WEB) that will hold everyone's web space. A user should be able to log into their account on the USER server and be able to access their data which resides on MAIL and WEB. I figured I can use autofs to mount the NFS folders as needed when a user logs in and out. However, what I'm stuck with right now is the user space replication.
At the moment, our old server is using NIS+ so that another machine can verify that someone exists, however that's all it does. If I continue with that approach, I will have to manually create folders each time on the other machines each time we add a new user. I don't know if there's another way of doing that. But I guess the question here is, do we stick with NIS+ since it's been working for us in like forever, or should I start looking at other options? Ideally I just want one master server that contains all the user information (and that will be the one they physically log in to) and then have the other ones automatically create and share folders as needed. I realize I'm going to be writing scripts to make this happen, but before I go that far, I wanted to see what kind of input I will receive from this group.
What's the best approach to this? Switch to something other than NIS+? LDAP maybe (I know zip of LDAP, so that may be a stumbling block.) Another way to link the machines? Anything?
Thanks!
A
Ashley M. Kirchner wrote:
hat's the best approach to this? Switch to something other than NIS+? LDAP maybe (I know zip of LDAP, so that may be a stumbling block.) Another way to link the machines? Anything?
Check out these two projects:
GFS: http://www.redhat.com/gfs/ LDAP: http://directory.fedoraproject.org/
Both are available in Fedora.
Michael Cronenworth wrote:
Check out these two projects:
GFS: http://www.redhat.com/gfs/ LDAP: http://directory.fedoraproject.org/
Both are available in Fedora.
Thanks. I saw the LDAP project before I sent my e-mail out. I'm still looking at it to see if it's what I need, or if it's too much. As for the GFS one, is that an open source project, or a pay-for piece? That does look like overkill, but at the same time, if it makes things easier ...
A
Ashley M. Kirchner wrote:
Thanks. I saw the LDAP project before I sent my e-mail out. I'm still looking at it to see if it's what I need, or if it's too much. As for the GFS one, is that an open source project, or a pay-for piece? That does look like overkill, but at the same time, if it makes things easier ...
I'm using 389 for a Samba domain controller in a 30 person office and it's perfect. If you ever plan to integrate a wiki or bugzilla or perhaps an in-house tool, LDAP authentication works well for those things. Single login across multiple operating systems and web apps. :D
As for GFS, it's free. yum install gfs2-utils. I don't have personal experience with it though.
On Wed, 2010-01-13 at 07:45 -0700, Ashley M. Kirchner wrote:
As for the GFS one, is that an open source project, or a pay-for piece?
GFS is open source. However, my understanding is (and hopefully someone will correct me if I am wrong) that in order to use GFS, you have to swallow the whole basketball of setting up Red Hat Cluster Suite (RHCS) as well. RHCS is open source too, but it is fairly complicated to set up and configure, and designed to do much more than just provide shared storage via GFS.
--Greg
On Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 11:22 AM, Ashley M. Kirchner ashley@pcraft.com wrote:
We're going to split out main server up into 3, possibly more with backup redundancy. The basic setup will be 1 server (USER) holding everyone's physical account, 1 server (MAIL) which holds everyone's mail spool (INBOXES only), and 1 server (WEB) that will hold everyone's web space. A user should be able to log into their account on the USER server and be able to access their data which resides on MAIL and WEB. I figured I can use autofs to mount the NFS folders as needed when a user logs in and out. However, what I'm stuck with right now is the user space replication.
At the moment, our old server is using NIS+ so that another machine can verify that someone exists, however that's all it does. If I continue with that approach, I will have to manually create folders each time on the other machines each time we add a new user. I don't know if there's another way of doing that. But I guess the question here is, do we stick with NIS+ since it's been working for us in like forever, or should I start looking at other options? Ideally I just want one master server that contains all the user information (and that will be the one they physically log in to) and then have the other ones automatically create and share folders as needed. I realize I'm going to be writing scripts to make this happen, but before I go that far, I wanted to see what kind of input I will receive from this group.
What's the best approach to this? Switch to something other than NIS+? LDAP maybe (I know zip of LDAP, so that may be a stumbling block.) Another way to link the machines? Anything?
Thanks!
Use NFS, mount the user directories on all 3 machines in the same location under the same path.
Use NIS to share the login info and such, user can then login to any machine and all should look the same.
Why are you needing to replicate the users dirs?
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Ashley M. Kirchner -
Greg Woods -
Michael Cronenworth -
Roger Heflin